02/06/20

My myeloma may be in remission and inactive, but that doesn't mean that all effects have gone away. My stamina is not what it was, and I get tired more easily. Every time I get back from a walk/roll I can't stop myself falling asleep and dozing for an hour (or two). Yesterday afternoon we did the local two mile walk around the two farm reservoirs visible from the end of the garden. Going downhill to reservoir #1 is hard work even with the all-terrain Victor the Veloped, mainly because the field-edge footpath slopes badly from right to left so I'm constantly fighting gravity trying to send him off to the left and into the crops. The rest of the route is much easier but nevertheless I crashed out at home after feeding the fish and the cats (Sue did the people tea) and nearly missed my regular weekday 5pm online backgammon date. Thanks to Sue I didn't - it would have been an unforgiveable sin.

I don't know where this exhaustion comes from. My red cell count is OK, although at the low end of normal (4.58, where "normal" is 4.4 - 5.8). It can't be the chemo, because I had it through all of the three months treatment-free that have just ended. I don't think it's lack of physical condition because I do get out for a decent walk almost every day and have done so all through the lockdown - although I certainly wouldn't claim to be super-fit. Not by a long way. It isn't anything like as bad as full-blown fatigue, which I expect I'll experience at some stage. That means you can't even raise the energy to get out of bed. My daily routine isn't all that different from what it was before MGUS and myeloma - I just haven't spent as much time sitting in the car for the last several weeks. "It a mystery" - Detritus the troll (the wise and much-missed Terry Pratchett).